TL;DR. In 2014, the groundbreaking Potter study showed Native-American-tagged DNA connecting descendants believed to be from Mary Kittamaquund (or other/unknown Piscataway ancestor) through the Beaven/Brent and Marsham/Queen lines. Over the past decade I have preserved the communications and receipts—including GEDmatch screenshots, cousin emails, and land-record citations—and now leveraged ChatGPT to re/run, analyze, interpret, and archive all of the kit-to-kit comparisons and screenshots to make this case and call to action. The same Native-enriched windows (Potter/Yordy) reappear in our 2025 dataset and, crucially, triangulate across multiple cousins. Combined with early colonial records, wills, deeds, lived experiences and reconnections with Piscataway/Potomac and Southern Maryland relatives (Feast of the Dead, 2016 +), the picture is clearer than ever: the Beaven–Brent line carries genuine Amerindian DNA and a deep pre-American his/her they/our story. What this means, or how it's interpreted and expressed, may be a matter of debate; But this article is a call for cousins/elders/researchers to come together to contribute kits, lived experiences, and support for a refreshed study with more descendants, using the most advanced genetic science, research, scholars, and story keepers, so we can have the conversation.
Why this update
The 2014 paper by Shawn & Lois Potter—hosted at DNAeXplained by Roberta Estes—was the blockbuster opener. It gathered scattered descendants of Mary Kittamaquund (Piscataway) and Giles Brent, and pointed to Mary Brent (their daughter) and her marriage to Charles Beaven as a conduit of Indigenous ancestry into 17th-century Southern Maryland families. We have records of the land deeds between the Beavens and Marshams at Hickory Thicket (see below). I find it significant that Charles Beaven participated in the Maryland militia's expedition against the Nanticoke Indians in 1678, with remaining Piscataway allies, taking the land by force that later became the first president George Washington's estate-plantation (Mt Vernon), on the Virginia side. The historical proximity between the Beavens/Marshams and the Maryland/Pisctaway enlisted militia, a century before the constitution of the United States was ratified, making this a unique historical undertaking to better understanding early colonial history and colonization of the Potomac.
(see below) "Charles Beavin's Militia Service 1675" (Military Record).
Since then:
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I have scrubbed and archived the kit numbers that appeared in the public comments and in materials I had access to from the Potter study.
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I compared my kit one-to-one with dozens of cousins and claimed cousins, recoonnected through social media and DNAeXplained website.
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I preserved side-by-side screenshots and notes from direct correspondence among participants (including expert Gary Yordy) and the Potters.
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Platform changes at GEDmatch have made some of the legacy tools harder to reproduce, but the original segment coordinates we saved still allow independent re-checks and triangulation with more advanced tools and experts (coming soon).
Figure 1 (insert): “Master Segment Map – working sheet” (request access).
Figure 2 (insert): “Potter/Yordy NA windows table” (request access).
Figure 3 (insert): “Maternal vs Paternal assignment sheet” (request access).
What the 2014 study + Yordy found (anchor points)
Private communications between Potter/Yordy highlight repeated Native-enriched windows (Dodecad World9, cross-check encouraged) that overlapped among Beaven/Brent and Marsham/Queen descendants—making coincidence unlikely. Examples from their list:
These were admixture windows, not yet proven IBD. The 2014 team encouraged validation through IBD triangulation—exactly what we push forward here.
What's new in 2025 (replication + triangulation)
From my saved comparisons and fresh checks, we now see IBD overlaps that line up with those 2014 windows and co-match among cousins:
- My kit (A419739) co-matches with Beaven-line cousins on chromosomes 1, 7, 15, 18, 19.
- Elizabeth Sheppard (SN4360185)—maternal cousin Dorsett/Beaven Line—adds long, reliable blocks:
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- Chr2 180–204 Mb (15.8 cM)
- Chr3 189–193 Mb (12.4 cM)
- Chr9 137–141 Mb (13.3 cM)
- Chr11 0.2–26.6 Mb (47.9 cM)
- Chr22 44–49 Mb (14.6 cM)
- Gordy (A568560, Beaven descent) overlaps Potter’s Chr9 and Chr14 zones and carries a Chr22 slice (42–43 Mb).
- Slape (T884931) and ChaRob (T531328) reinforce Marsham/Steele/Boone clusters on Chr1/7/15/18.
- Gumbo1 (M765201) contributes to Chr6/15 clusters seen near Potter’s windows.
We keep admixture windows separate from proven IBD. Where three or more cousins co-match one another on the samesegment, we mark triangulated.
Triangulated cousin groupins (sample):
- A419739 (me) × SN4360185 (Sheppard) × Queens (Scott/Craig) × Lisa Pinkney × Constance Gilbert × Emily Matthews × Taylor1995 on parts of Chr2, 3, 11, 15, 22—with several overlaps inside the Potter/Yordy Native-tagged zones.
Maternal vs. paternal—untangling two different Amerindian-markers
- My maternal line (Dorsett/Beaven → Brent → Piscataway) carries the signals that cohere with the Potter clusters in Southern Maryland.
- My paternal "Underwood" line (North Carolina 1700s) William Wedgebar shows separate small Amerindian traces—likely Southeastern (e.g., Buncombe/Wilkes counties-North Carolina)—that do not triangulate with the Dorsett/Beaven/Brent/Piscataway cluster. This partition is critical: it assigns the Potomac-side Native signal to Mary Kittamaquund’s descendants, separate from my North Carlolina-Underwood lineage.
Documents that match the DNA (selected anchors & why they matter)
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Charles Beaven ↔ Col. Richard Marsham: assignment and re-patent of Hickory Thicket (600a); routine appearances together in wills, bonds, and neighborhood transactions (late 1680s–1690s).
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Mary (Brent) Beaven in the record: witness to Basil Waring’s will (1688); legacies and 1702 witnessing patterns that map cleanly onto the Hargrove–Orme–Dorsett–Brookfield cluster on the ground.
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Richard Beaven deposition (1731) “about 53” ⇒ b. c.1678—tightening the Mary Brent × Charles Beaven marriage window after her civil separation from John Fitzherbert (noted in 1672).
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The neighborhood schematic (Hall, Early Landowners of Maryland) places Hargrove (Beaven home place) beside The Wedge (Orme) and Twiford/Littleworth (Dorsett) with Marsham tracts ~2–3 miles NW—exactly the network reflected in the wills.
Together, the place-based record and the segment-based map tell the same story.
Documents that match the DNA (selected anchors & why they matter)
- In November 2016 I visited Southern Maryland for the first time and participated in the annual the Feast of the Dead ceremony at Piscataway State Park—sacred grounds and assuary of the Piscataway people, where Turkey Tayac rests by act of Congress—looking directly across the Potomac from Mount Vernon. The night before we sweat with relatives and ancestors under the cold moon light, and the following day after ceremony, I shot and documented this recorded history at St. Ignatius Church—the oldest continuously active parish in the United States, that preserves early accounts of Kittamaquund and his conversion to Catholicism (see below). It was at that very moment my grandmother passed away (in real time in Texas), who was my direct maternal link to Southern Maryland, through my mother, grandmother, great grandmother, and so forth. This isn't just genetic research, but some of the most impressionable moments of my life.
- Since 2016 I've been blessed to witness and participate in many sacred ceremonies, fellowship, and shared friendships that are now an indelible part the fabric of not only my physical "DNA", but my mental-spiritual-psychological associations with this life and story.
- Our eldest daughter Kaya was in a sweat lodge in Maryland before she was even 2 years old, and then kicking it with Earl Sweatshirt during Anderson Paak show in Nashville.
- Kaya was also baptized at St. Ignatius Church, the same place as her 11th great-grandfather in 1640.
- On that same trip we travelled to the "Hargrove/ Hickory Thicket" location (described above) with the map expert genealogical historian and cousin Gary Yordy gave us.
- I had the once in a lifetime opportunity to interview and converse with Chief Billy Red Wing of the Piscataway Nation along with his grandson Sebi Medina-Tayac, about Turkey Tayac and Piscataway history and culture (private interview).
This work is more than data. It’s remembrance—and preservation; standing on an unbroken chain of tombstones and physical grave-sites from my mother to Charles Beaven, and now according to DNA science and many reaffirming relatives, → "Mary Brent/Beaven",→ Mary Kittamaquund → her people. The DNA and deeds stitch to ceremony and place-space.
Methods, platforms, and today's realities
- Preservation matters. Some legacy GEDmatch tools and outputs are harder to reproduce now; server load, policy changes, and new ownership have reshaped access patterns over time. Because we saved kit IDs, exact coordinates, and screenshots, we can still verify and triangulate segments with today’s tools.
- Admixture ≠ IBD. We log Potter’s Native-enriched windows separately from proven IBD segments. Only when a region is confirmed by three-way triangulation do we elevate it as inherited from the shared ancestor path.
- Cautious labels. We mark segments as “Native-enriched” only after cross-tool confirmation and keep speculative tags clearly labeled.
What we need now (your part)
We’re maintaining a 2025 Master Segment Map for the Kittamaquund project. To strengthen it, we invite:
- Descendants of Beaven, Brent, Marsham, Queen, Waring, Boone, Roberts, Dorsett, Harl, and allied Southern Maryland families.
- Piscataway and Potomac-region researchers and relatives.
- Anyone with 1600s roots along the Patuxent/Potomac who can share a kit and a sourced lineage.
How to contribute (simple as 1-2-3):
- Share kit ID(s) and permission for one-to-one and triangulation checks. You can comment here or email get@asherunderwood.com
- Provide a brief lineage back to your earliest documented ancestor in these lines, with one or two citations (will, deed, parish entry, or a link to an image/scan).
- If you have old GEDmatch screenshots (Genesis era, c. 2016–2019), please include them—date-stamped images are gold for replication.
*Bonus: If you have archival-genealogical-genetic-historical expertise, in any of these disciplines, and would help develop this further please reach out.
Acknowledgements
To Shawn & Lois Potter for opening the door in 2014 and connecting so many people through their study; to Roberta Estes for hosting and methodological rigor; to Gary Yordy for the land-deed spine that keeps the story honest and for all of his years of contributions; to my cousins Elizabeth Sheppard, Craig & Scott Queen, Gary Yordy, and to those Gedmatch kits that were shared or made available in the Potter Study (or shared in the comments): Slape, ChaRob, gumbo1, Boone/Roberts descendants, just to name a few, and the many others who shared data and his/her-stories; and to the Piscataway community and descendants for preservation of traditions and the honor of ceremony, for the warm welcomes / food / experiences. To Gabrielle Tayac, and to Seib and Routree for their detailed and informative work. To Chief Billy, Sebi, Naiche, and Jason Corwin for Flickering Flame. The list goes on and will continue to grow.
Selected record anchors
- PG Wills, Liber 6:285–286 – Will of Charles Beaven, 1698/9 (proved 1699).
- Maryland Council Proceedings, vol. 15 (Apr 26, 1672) – Calvert’s letter re: “the Indian Brent.”
- Liber 7:582–583 (1664) – Katherine (Brent) Marsham service right assignment.
- Liber 12:512 (1670) – Marsham proves 50a “service of Katherine his wife.”
- PG Land Records, Liber Q:521 (1731) – Richard Beaven age “about 53.”
- Hall, Early Landowners of Maryland – Patuxent/Piscataway neighborhood schematic (Hargrove/Orme/Dorsett/Brookfield).
- Maryland Calendar of Wills, vol. 2, p. 50 – Basil Waring will (1688).
To be continued..
Personal photo (above) from Hargrove December 2022
Google-Earth Coordinates
